Durnik emerged from the tent. He was bare-chested, and his silver amulet glittered in the moonlight. He put his arm about Polgara's shoulders, and the two of them stood drinking in the beauty of this most perfect of nights.

Garion was about to call out to them, but something stayed his tongue. The moment they were sharing was too private to be intruded upon. After quite some time, Aunt Pol whispered something to her husband, and, smiling, the two of them turned and went hand in hand back into their tent. Quietly Garion let the tent flap drop and went back to his blankets.

Slowly, as they continued in a generally southwesterly direction, the forest changed. When they were still in the mountains, the trees had been evergreens interspersed here and there with aspens. As they approached the lowlands at the base of the huge mountain, they increasingly came across groves of beech and elm. And then at last they entered a forest of ancient oaks.

As they rode beneath the spreading branches in sun-dappled shade, Garion was sharply reminded of the Wood of the Dryads in southern Tolnedra. One glance at his little wife's face revealed that the similarity was not lost on her either. A kind of dreamy contentment came over her, and she seemed to be listening to voices that only she could hear.

It was about noon on a splendid summer day that they overtook another traveler, a white-bearded man dressed in clothing made from deerskin. The handles of the tools protruding from the lumpy bundle on the back of his pack mule proclaimed him to be a gold hunter, one of those vagrant hermits who haunt wildernesses the world over. He was riding a shaggy mountain pony so stumpy that its rider's feet nearly touched the ground on either side. "I thought I heard somebody coming up from behind," the gold hunter said as Garion and Zakath, both in their mail shirts and helmets, drew alongside him. "Don't see many in these woods—what with the curse and all."

"I thought the curse only worked on Grolims," Garion said.

"Most believe it doesn't pay to take chances. Where are you bound?"

"To Kell," Garion replied. There was no real point in making a secret of it.

"I hope you’ve been invited. The folk at Kell don't welcome strangers who just take it upon themselves to go there."

"They know we're coming."

"Oh. It's all right then. Strange place, Kell, and strange people. Of course living right under that mountain the way they do would make anybody strange after a while. If it's all right, I'll ride along with you as far as the turnoff to Balasa a couple miles on up ahead."

"Feel free," Zakath told him. "Aren't you missing a good time to be looking for gold, though?"